My family loves Christmas.  Most years, my aunt Joan records the whole event: my two cousins and I walking into the room to discover newfound presents under an ornament-laden tree; the three of us ripping paper in delight and excitement; my grandmother, uncle, and mother watching us with big smiles, content with their secret labor as Santa's elves.  Sometimes, we find those old tapes and laugh, remind each other of how we used to act, and recall the past.  Christmas, with its bright decorations and multi-colored strings of lights around the house and windows, brings unity to my family.

       Back when I was four or five, my cousins, Amanda and Jessica, and their parents still lived in their trailer.  Every year, my mother and I spent Christmas break with them. Their acre (or so) plot of land provided plenty of creative opportunities: the playpen became my fortress, the volleyball court in the back of the property turned into a fierce battleground, my uncle's fire pit morphed into a raging forest fire the elves trusted me to put out, and I played with my fellow dolphins in the above-ground pool-if I dared to swim at that time of year.  Amanda, the oldest, bossed me around a lot.  She liked to put makeup on Jess and I.  We played around and got on each other's nerves a lot.  We argued and cried to our respective parents.  We ran and chased one another through the property.  I think Amanda bit me that year, but I got her back.  

        She still reminds of me of when I left that scar on her arm.

        Back then we loved to be around one another.  We imagined our way through life and enjoyed the ignorance of childhood.  Dogs and cats of all sizes and temperaments roamed around their property.  Eddie, their brown pit bull, was our self-designated guardian.  He protected us from snakes.  Sally, their miniature Schnauzer, barked at everything: squirrels, leaves, cars coming up the windy dirt driveway.  Anything.  How I loved those cold, rare dry days.           

        When I was around five or six, Nana, my grandmother, still lived, and my entire family enjoyed a deep contact.  She was the glue holding us together.  Our big family Christmas get-togethers always took place at Nana's house.  The smell of her flowery perfume mixed with her body odor pervaded every inch of me and, I think, every inch of everyone else.  It was very unique and filled our hearts with tenderness.  
I think we came together for Nana's sake.  My aunt Brenda's side of the family usually kept their distance, or so it seemed, from the rest of us.  But not during Christmas.  Everyone got along for that, especially since Nana's banana nut bread flirted with all of our taste buds.  What a cook she was!  Her kitchen always tempted us into its U-shaped area to snatch a cookie or brownie from its linoleum counters.  For some reason, I adored the washer/dryer area, which was facing right if the kitchen was to the left.  It felt like my secret nook, and Nana often snatched me out and held me close.  What a loving woman she was.    

        Her Christmas tree, overwhelmed with her grandchildren's handmade ornaments, always resided in the left-hand corner of her living room so all of us could open our presents.  I liked that my cousins and I received all the attention and priority when it came time to open them.  After that, we played our family's favorite holiday game: white elephant; I always managed to get the strangest results out of the unknown pile of identically wrapped presents, lying in the center of the room before us.  During the festivities, Nana seemed alive and happy.  She laughed with us, joked around, offered refreshments, and took care of my cousins and I.  I remember little of those times, the times before she lost her vigor and started carting around that awful oxygen tank.  
Nana died of emphysema when I was 8 on December twelfth, and my family never recovered.  I never recovered, either.  Not for a long time.  When Christmas rolled around, we tried to smile and laugh like usual.  But our hearts were heavy.  That year felt colder than the others and, after a while, that frost hardened the edges of our family.  

        We went on with life and became distant.

        I spent my first Christmas with Mom not long after that.  I think I was around eleven or twelve.  Since our condo was on the second floor, I effaced our windows with red and white Christmas lights from the inside.  Aunt Joan and Uncle Mark upgraded that year and replaced their trailer with a two-story house.  They wanted to spend that Christmas alone, but I wanted to spend it in their new house, too.  I considered Amanda and Jess more like sisters, but this new blow made me realize how dissociated everyone had become.  I realized this on Christmas morning when I walked into our living room, smelled the pine , and, for two seconds, resisted the urge to cry.  Of course, the tempting presents underneath the already shedding foliage of the tree replenished my mood.  They always did.  

        After that point, my family drifted farther and farther away, like two islands moving in opposite directions.  We still held Christmas at Amanda and Jessica's house, but things just changed.  Because of Mom's work, we stopped going to their house on a weekly basis and settled for monthly, then semi-monthly visits.  Communication existed on superficial levels only; neither island cared to know the personal affairs of day-to-day life anymore.     

        I spent my sixteenth Christmas in California.  My mother and family remained in Texas while I walked on fresh snow high in the mountains near Huntington Lake.  I bundled up in about five layers, but the gloves failed to keep my hands warm as my body heat migrated south for the winter.  Compared to the barely thirty-five degree Christmases in Houston, this elevated place, with its powdery white stuff, gripped my core with its freezing wind.  I reminded myself that I chose to move to Central California, chose to remove myself even further.  But this mountainous new world frightened me.  I knew only the McDanels, whom I lived with.  California's rules and lifestyles seemed so foreign, like I moved to Tokyo or Paris instead of three states to the left.  On the way back to Fresno that evening, I wondered what Amanda and Jess would think of the snow, and immediately began to cry.      

        Time continued to unwind, and Christmas Eve came.  I sat in the McDanels' formal dining room next to their fake Christmas tree.  Fresno, a desert, occasionally graced us with a vision of the mountains about an hour away, depending on the air quality.  It never rained, either.  I refused to accept how sad I felt, how I looked at Fresno and longed for Houston.  But, on that evening, Fresno politely gave us foggy weather that was muggier than the refreshing cold expected on Christmas Eve.  There was no smell of pine.  There was no cold to bundle up against.  There was no firewood crackling.  There was no hot chocolate in the dark while Christmas music played on the radio.  Sitting there, in the brightly lit, normal smelling room, I realized how important that particular Christmas image was to me and longed to have it again.  I longed for my mother and family.  I longed for Nana.     

        Now, preparing for my eighteenth Christmas, my outlook and circumstances have changed drastically.  I am engaged; I speak to Mom again.  Even Amanda and Jess talk to me now.  The air in Fresno is becoming crisp and while some days go up to eighty degrees, those cold days make me bundle up.  On those days, I remember back then, I remember the Christmases of a warm childhood, and I begin to wonder what Christmas will be like this year.  I smile.  

        When I see my mom and family again, I want to bring out the old videotapes, those images of Christmases past that bring unity to us all.